Nancy, start with Model D. Model D is a news site dedicated to “changing the conversation about Detroit” – basically, they’re a news company (professional journalists, photographers, etc) dedicated to covering the Good Stuff happening in Detroit (business, culture, investments, etc) as an explicit contrast to the “if it bleeds, it leads” mainstream media’s take on Detroit.

They’ve spun off from Model D to Pop City (covering Pittsburgh), Rapid Growth (Grand Rapids), and Metromode (covering the Detroit metropolitan area). They’re looking at setting up some smaller sites around SEMi to cover individual cities; Ypsi’s one of the places they’ve been approaching people . They’re pretty unashamed boosters of these cities, intent on targeting the “creative class” type demographic (and the businesses and developers that love them) and convincing them that these cities are good places to live / work / play. I think they’re pretty neat.

(Full disclosure: they read ArborUpdate, and I have received an invitation to guest blog for them – but I think they’re pretty neat regardless.)